My So Cult Life

If you were to talk to my and other family members of Armstrong Cult Survivors who still hold strongly to that faith, you'd hear the same argument over and over again. "I love them too much to ever hurt them. None of what they say is true. We aren't in a cult, we just have the truth." But being "loved" by family members loyal to the teachings of Herbert W. Armstrong is often a very painful experience. For some, that "love" was even LETHAL. Sometimes it's easy for people to forget that CHILDREN of cult members are often the ones who suffer most. Below are some highlights from firsthand accounts of what life was like in the WCG and its resulting splinter groups. I don't know what it's like for you to read these, but for me it has a kind of reassuring comfort coupled with intense fear and dread. Like wrapping up in your favorite blanket and watching the scariest movie imaginable alone in a pitch black room. The familiarity of the blanket ...

 When I started this blog, I never expected it to be more than just a place for me to open up about my experiences. Being contacted by former or current members of the WCG and/or its various splinter groups wasn't something that had even crossed my mind when I began writing about Herbert Armstrong and the financial, spiritual, emotional, and physical damage that he caused in so many lives.  My blog was and is a kind of therapy. MySoCultLife.org is a big part of my process to shake loose the dark shadows of a doomsday cult that cling to my id / ego / superego and render me not quite capable of relating to a "normal" life.  Some echoes of cult life are funny little eccentricities (like the overwhelming urge to read the ingredients on a packet of crackers that come with your soup at a restaurant, to see if they are made with lard); and others are severe enough to require medication and therapy to help control them (including, but not limited to  recurring nightmares, ...

  I took a break from blogging for a bit. I was concerned that my posts about my cult upbringing had me coming off as more of a “victim” than I had intended. That is to say that they showed any shred of victimhood whatsoever. In the process of worrying about how I was being perceived, I got a much clearer lens on the process of recovering from gaslighting . Recently, I started to notice that I have been teaching my daughter not to accept everything I taught her as automatically being a fact. There was always an underlying message there of “don’t trust me just because I’m your mommy.” Now that she is getting older, she is really starting to own the question “why?” And although she hasn’t asked the question itself yet, she has been building up to it over the past few weeks. “Why shouldn’t I trust my mommy?” Oh… uh… I think I may have screwed this up. After a bit of reflection, it became clear to me. I’m teaching my daughter not to trust me because I shouldn’t have trusted my mom. M...